Last month, New Horizon Church, a Grace Brethren congregation in Harlem, New York, was featured in the New York Daily News for their fight against diabetes. It is an outgrowth of the church’s Institute for Leadership, a group intended to “empower local leaders by giving them the resources they need to be successful.”

Below is a portion of the story. To read the complete story, click here.

“Diabetes is high risk,” said Rev. Michael Faulkner, founder and pastor of Harlem’s New Horizon Church of New York. “It’s very expensive, it’s socially acceptable, and it’s a silent killer. The lost productivity, the lost wages, the health insurance costs, we need to do something about that. We need to make a difference.”

Three years ago Faulkner, 55, his wife, Virginia, and New Horizon executive director Franco Olmeda started “Faith Fights Diabetes” as a way to bring information about diabetes treatment and prevention to religious communities without regard to faith or domination.

Faulkner is a former professional football player and longtime minister who was the Republican challenger to longtime Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel in the 2010 election.

Around the same time they started New Horizon – the eight-year-old church has been at its 245 W. 135th St. location since last year – The Faulkners and Olmeda also started the Institute for Leadership, a group intended to “empower local leaders by giving them the resources they need to be successful,” Faulkner said.

“My belief is that wherever you find a struggle, a community crisis, there is a leader struggling to resolve that problem who is under resourced,” Faulkner said. “So rather than try to reinvent the wheel, we want to resource leaders who are close to the problem.

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